Okay, this is a weird one...

[Cobra]

Wasn't sure exactly where to post this, as it involves a little bit of everything.

I'm working as an in-house tech for a roof & floor truss plant. The GM has a PC with an ECS Mobo (can't get the exact model # at the moment, but it's a VIA KT133A chipset). Everything was hunky dory with it until a week or so ago, when we hooked up a new HP LaserJet 4050 to the LPT port. MOST things would print out fine, but on a fairly frequent basis, he'd get garbled characters/missing images on engineering drawings (think Autocad). At first, I figured it to a bug in the software, but it prints fine through the network to an LJ4000, and upon closer inspection, they are both using the same driver (HP LJ4), as this software tends to work better with older, legacy HP drivers.

After testing an LJ2100 on the local port, I figured it to a faulty LPT port. Rather than have to wait on a replacement motherboard, the GM decided instead to get PCI parallel port & use that instead. We picked up a NetMos 9805 PCI parallel port, installed it, hooked the printer up to it, and everything seemed great. All the images and such came out fine. But then, later, when he tried to save to the floppy drive, the system hung. I don't mean "lock up, won't respond to CTRL+ALT+DEL" hang...I mean, sit there accessing the floppy drive and not do anything else while attempting to read it, only to give up after 30 seconds hang. Amazing, you disabled the 2nd parallel port in device managed & reboot, and the floppy works again.

I see NO resource conflicts of any type, and this is a pretty base install, and there are quite a few of these motherboards at the place, which all run with no problems. I said to hell with it after tring for a half an hour, then deleted the enum key in the registry & let it re-detect all the hardware. Found everything fine, and believe it or not - the second parallel port & the floppy now co-exist. The problem? My garbled characters in the engineering program is back. And this is WITH the new parallel port, and the on-board one disabled in the bios.

I've never seen anything quite like this, but then again, I live a pretty sheltered life. If anyone can shed some light on this one, I'd be eternally grateful.

[WebHead]

What version of AutoCAD is it? I used to have problems like this back when I was assisting the mech eng. dept. at TI. It's been awhile, but I think I might remember how to do it if I knew the AutoCAD version.

[Cobra]

Well, the thing is, it's not actually AutoCAD, but a very similar program, designed specifically for truss engineering. The software is called MiTek, in case anyone has ever heard of/worked with it.

[ilovetheusers]

[quote]Originally posted by Cobra:
<strong>Well, the thing is, it's not actually AutoCAD, but a very similar program, designed specifically for truss engineering. The software is called MiTek, in case anyone has ever heard of/worked with it.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Darn. Though I had a solution for ya. HP has special drivers for CAD work for this printer. I can tell you that 4050's areflakey and updating the drivers often helps, though it sounds like your issue is different. Still an update of drivers never hurt anyone (much).

[tha 4NiK8R]

make sure you don't have any loose cables in that machine. may have knocked one loose installing the card

[WebHead]

I'm not sure how this software works, but in AutoCAD, you actually have to set up drivers from within AutoCAD to make it print correctly (you would type "config" in the command line and set the print options.) AutoCAD will use Windows drivers (for that LJ400 that you're talking about.) But for large scale prints (i.e. B size prints or bigger on say a LJ5000) then it's better to use the AutoCAD drivers. It's just been a long time, so I can't remember the exact steps to go through for it. But anyway, maybe this MiTek is the same way. There might be some options from within the software to specify the printer.

[techs]

If the printer is using an ecp port I would try changing the dma even if windows shows no conflict.

[confus-ed]

Is software actually anything to do with this?

[quote] After testing an LJ2100 on the local port, I figured it to a faulty LPT port <hr></blockquote>

[quote] Found everything fine, and believe it or not - the second parallel port & the floppy now co-exist. The problem? <hr></blockquote>

I think you answered your own question here.

No way should a floppy controller and lpt port share resources.

Not even an 'extra' one should be doing that.

Floppy s/be irq 6 dma 2, lpt irq7.

[GHSTECH]

Have your tried changing the port type to epp or spp. Some printers are picky about this.